Norman Naimark

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Norman M. Naimark
Norman M. Naimark in 2018
Born1944
CitizenshipUnited States
OccupationHistorian
Spouse
Katherine Jolluck
(m. 2000)
[1]
Academic background
EducationStanford University (BA 1966, MA 1968, PhD 1972)
InfluencesBarrington Moore Jr.'s Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy[1]
Academic work
Main interestsModern Eastern European history, genocide, and ethnic cleansing in the region
Notable worksThe Russians In Germany (1995)

Norman M. Naimark (/ˈnmɑːrk/; born 1944, New York City) is an American historian. He is the Robert and Florence McDonnell Professor of Eastern European Studies at Stanford University,[2] and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.[3] He writes on modern Eastern European history, genocide, and ethnic cleansing in the region.[4]

Career[edit]

Naimark received all of his degrees at Stanford. He taught at Boston University, and was a fellow at Harvard University's Russian Research Center before returning to Stanford as a member of the faculty in the 1980s. Naimark is of Jewish heritage; his parents were born in Galicia.[citation needed]

He is a member of the editorial boards of a number of professional journals, including The American Historical Review and The Journal of Contemporary History.

He was awarded the Officers Cross of the Order of Merit by Germany.[4]

He may be best-known for his acclaimed study, The Russians In Germany.[5] He wrote in a 2017 essay that genocide is often tied to war, dehumanization, and/or economic resentment. He writes, "if there weren’t other very good reasons to prevent war, the correlation between war and genocide is a good one".[6]

Views on the definition of genocide[edit]

Throughout his more recent works, Naimark argues that the "world needs a much broader definition of genocide" than set by the 1948 Genocide Convention to also include "nations killing social classes and political groups." In his 2010 work Stalin’s Genocides, Naimark makes a case that the government of the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin "killed systematically rather than episodically" and that Dekulakization, Holodomor and Great Purge "shouldn’t be seen as discrete episodes, but seen together", calling it "a horrific case of genocide – the purposeful elimination of all or part of a social group, a political group."[7]

Naimark argues that they constitute genocide due to, among other factors, the intent of extermination that underpinned them: the quotas that sometimes were set on the number of people that needed to be executed or arrested, the dehumanizing language directed at kulaks, slogans promoted by activists openly calling for their extermination, and a "great deal of evidence of government connivance" regarding Holodomor. Naimark writes that early drafts of the UN Genocide Convention had included the killing of social and political groups in the initial definitions of genocide, but were dropped after the Soviet delegation threatened to veto the convention.[7]

Published works[edit]

Books

  • Stalin and the Fate of Europe: The Postwar Struggle for Sovereignty. (Harvard University Press, 2019).
  • Genocide: A World History. Oxford University Press, 2017.
  • A Question of Genocide: Armenians and Turks at the End of the Ottoman Empire. Oxford University Press, 2011 (Paperback ed. 2012, ISBN 978-0199930371). (Editor, together with Ronald Grigor Suny and Fatma Müge Göçek)
  • Stalin's Genocides (Princeton University Press, 2010).[8]
  • Fires Of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing In 20th Century Europe (Harvard, 2001)
  • The Russians In Germany: The History Of The Soviet Zone Of Occupation, 1945–1949 (Harvard, 1995)
  • Terrorists And Social Democrats: The Russian Revolutionary Movement Under Alexander III (Harvard, 1983)
  • The History Of The "Proletariat": The Emergence Of Marxism In The Kingdom Of Poland, 1870–1887 (Columbia, 1979)

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b "H-Diplo Essay 284- Norman M. Naimark on Learning the Scholar's Craft: Reflections of Historians and International Relations Scholars". Robert Jervis International Security Studies Forum. October 30, 2020. Retrieved September 18, 2023.
  2. ^ "FSI | CISAC - Norman M. Naimark". cisac.fsi.stanford.edu.
  3. ^ "Norman M. Naimark". Hoover Institution.
  4. ^ a b "Norman Naimark". Stanford University. Retrieved March 13, 2017.
  5. ^ Johnson, Daniel (October 22, 1995). "The Zone". The New York Times.
  6. ^ Stanford, F. S. I. (April 13, 2017). "Why do humans commit genocide?". Medium. Retrieved October 25, 2020.
  7. ^ a b Haven, Cynthia (23 September 2010). "Stalin killed millions. A Stanford historian answers the question, was it genocide?". Stanford University. Retrieved September 18, 2023.
  8. ^ "Stalin's Genocides". Oxonian Review. March 3, 2011. Archived from the original on March 8, 2011.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)

External links[edit]